TCC Podcast #264: Stepping into Your CEO Role, Hiring a Team, and Giving a Better Client Experience with Ahfeeyah Thomas

The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:

Kira’s website
Rob’s website
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Ahfeeyah’s website
Hiring and Working with a VA with Hillary Weiss
The Ins and Outs of Creating a Microagency with Jamie Jensen
21 laws of leadership by John C. Maxwell

 

Full Transcript:

Kira:  Running your own business is hard enough. There are countless tasks you need to carry out. And sometimes it can just feel like way too much. What needs my attention first? Should I hire someone to help? And if so, who should I hire? Well, if you’re growing your business, you’re not alone. Ahfeeyah C. Thomas joins us to talk about how to hire a team and become a scalable CEO on the 264th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast.

Rob:  Before we dive into our interview with Ahfeeyah, this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Accelerator. And if you’re listening, you might be thinking, “Well, wait a second, The Accelerator’s not even open, why are you even talking about this?” And it’s because we’re making a few changes to The Accelerator the next time we do open. And if you’ve been thinking about joining this program, there’s never been a better time to join the waitlist. So, you make sure that you get notified when it opens up for new members early next year.

And when it comes to those changes, a couple of things that we’re doing is going through all of the content. We’re not necessarily saying that the old content was bad. We’re just saying we’re updating it with newer information. We’re adding in better frameworks to make it more understandable and improving the blueprints that help you put all of the advice and ideas and strategies into action so that you come out of the other end of The Accelerator with a business that is just ready for rocket ship growth or whatever it is that your goal is for your copywriting business.

So, if you want to be on the waitlist that you can hear about those changes and be notified of the new Copywriter Accelerator program or what it becomes, go to thecopywriteraccelerator.com and join the waitlist.

Kira:  Let’s begin with Ahfeeyah’s journey.

Ahfeeyah:  The honest question is I feel like it was a combination of just allowing myself to operate within my passion, operate within my purpose and allow the journey to be what it needed to be. So for me, it didn’t start with business coaching. I started out actually as a resume writer at the age of 18 years old was my very first business and I was writing resumes for $40. Now, obviously the prices went up since then, but at the time that’s what it was. And so naturally the passion behind that was that I wanted to help women and minorities be able to get paid for what they love to do.

And so, at the time my vision was, if I can rewrite their resumes, then I would be able to help them to get into positions that paid them more and that they were passionate about. And so that started that way. I gained my coaching certification through the International Coaching Federation, became a career coach and then always found a love between corporate and the business arena. And so I’m found myself working back and forth, being a career coach and then also working in the corporate sector, helping employees improve their professional development and so forth.

And so that led to being a career coach, helping people with their professional development, and then there were women that was in the corporate arena that I came across that wanted to become business owners. And so I was helping them to ultimately level up and move from their corporate space to the business space. And that was the birth of becoming a business coach and helping people strategically grow their brands. So yeah, that’s the backstory of all of that, and I’m sure we’ll dive in a little bit more on the design piece and what came after that.

Kira:  Okay. Let’s go back to your resume writing experience at the age of 18. So much of that is around positioning and how to position yourself best for the job. What did you learn if you learned anything from that experience that’s helped you understand how to brand clients and how to position clients, and how to position yourself and your business?

Ahfeeyah:  That’s another great question and there’s always a lesson. From that, what I was learning even then was that how you position yourself, how you brand yourself matters. Because especially in the dance society that we are in, you only have a short period of time to be able to capture someone’s attention, to be able to also tell your story. And so when it was resume writing, it was me helping my clients, my students at the time be able to market themselves, we are our personal brands.

So, I was able to help them to market themselves, and now as a brand growth strategist and creative director, I’m able to help companies go from being a business, designers, copywriters, go from being creative and really take their brand to the next level. So the message has carried through that you only have a short period of time to capture your audience and how you brand yourself will determine a lot of times the opportunities that will be lined up for you.

Kira:  And I know this is going back a little bit, but do you have any examples of how you did that for your clients with their resumes so they would grab attention instantly and you were just like, “You know what, if I make this change to your resume, you will instantly grab attention”?

Ahfeeyah:  Yes, yes. An example would be clients would come to me their resumes, and there was kind of a cookie cutter way that they were told they needed to do their resumes, or they needed to write their resumes. And so what I would do is I would teach them that they needed to take a look at the job description. They needed to figure out what the employer was asking for, and then ultimately customize that resume towards that job description.

And it’s so funny, because again, we’ll talk about this a little bit later. But in my program now, I’m taking all of my experience, even when we talk about professional development and teaching now on the business owner’s side of it how they need to write job description so that they can attract the right candidates. So it’s full circle. But in that example, once my clients were able to look at the resume, look at the job description and match it up, the employers were a lot more likely to call them because they were finding exactly what they needed within the resume.

And that let them know that the person that was applying was a qualified candidate. So simple tweaks, simple changes that we would make would allow them to be more, I guess, visible, be more attracted to employers by making those small changes.

Kira:  Can you share the lessons you learned from working in HR at Harvard that would help us or could help us as small business owners today? What we could pull from your work there that we may not think of or just be familiar with in our businesses, but we could benefit from?

Ahfeeyah:  A lot that I learned, and I speak about this often is that when we’re in corporate, there are so many systems and structures, strategy that is around us that we oftentimes don’t notice. So being an HR and overseeing and managing the hiring process, what I found is that we don’t carry that again over into our business. So are we writing the job description? In HR, there are a number of steps that that job description goes through before it is approved. And that includes assessing what the needs of the company, what the needs of the department are.

And so, we want to be doing the same things within our business in assessing what are my current needs? What are my current pain points in my business to really direct the hiring process? That’s one of the things that is a lesson. And as we look at now, moving over into building that team or elevating the team that we do have once we hire them is how our team meetings being conducted. Are they productive? Does your team understand the vision and the mission?

When we’re in corporate, each team meeting has a purpose. We’re asking certain questions, each specific employee has their role. And oftentimes I’ll see in my clients when they come to me, they won’t even have an organizational chart. So that’s another thing. They don’t have an organizational chart, so now new team members come on and they’re wondering, “Well, where do I go to for this information? Who is in charge of this specific task or this specific department within our business.?”

And depending on size, you may not have the departments, but the functions are still the same, like who’s handling the marketing aspect? Who’s handling sales? Who’s managing and handling operations? And so an organizational chart gives us eye opener to who’s in the company that is handling certain things? And in addition, who do we need to hire? So those are some simple lessons as we look at the HR process and the hiring process that we can really, really take an example from and implement into our company.

Kira:  What recommendations do you have for building our org chart, even if we are a smaller company or we’re a solopreneur? Is it still helpful to see a bigger picture even if you don’t intend to grow a team, but it might help to see where other contractors could fit into your business?

Ahfeeyah:  Absolutely, absolutely. That org chart I think sometimes as CEOs, we get a little afraid of it. It’s like, “I don’t know if I want to have 20 employees. I don’t know if I want to have 25.” And as I mentioned earlier that the functions are still the same. For example, the core systems and functions that I teach are marketing, sales, operations. And then we have two that I call are like the wing systems. And as you grow, they become more and more relevant, which is HR and legal, and then finance.

But let’s focus in on those three core systems, those three core departments, and that’s marketing, sales and operations. No matter how small you are, you have to have a marketing system because that is the way that you are attracting new people, a new audience into your business. And then for a sale, that’s how you’re converting those people and allowing them to become customers and clients of your business. And then lastly, operations is how you deliver on the promise, on how you deliver on what you said you were going to do when you converted them through the sales process.

So, taking that into our org chart, you really want to think about, okay, I’m the CEO, and so I’m sitting, if we can imagine a paper. You’re at the top and you may be actually the person who is overseeing the marketing, the sales and the operations in your business at that time. But being able to see that and being able to see where the pain points are in your business, you might then be able to say, “Hey, listen, I need a marketing assistant because the challenge right now is attracting new leads.

I need a sales closer because right now I need help converting new clients into my program, new customers into my business. Or there’s some things going on with operations and I want to elevate the client experience.” Oftentimes what I do is just, again, put yourself at the top of the list and look at all of the things that you’re doing within the business and where those responsibilities lie. And if it’s a contractor or a part-time assistant, by having that org chart, you’ll at least be able to see where everything goes and what department you’re hiring into, and what system you’re hiring thing too, as well. So I hope that that’s helpful, but that’s a lot of times how I start the process.

Kira:  Yeah, I like the idea of the three different buckets, the marketing, and sales, and operations, and viewing them separately to see which one is most critical. Do you start with the one where you feel like there is the most pain or there’s the most opportunity? How do you know where to start when it feels like, it often feels like all three areas of the business need help immediately? It’s hard to know which one to focus on.

Ahfeeyah:  Yeah, it totally is. And I will say that that is the beginning of the hiring process, but it’s not the only part. For me, there are a few different factors that I go through before hiring. So we want to look at the pain points, number one, and then we also want to look at what are our income-producing activities? So where could I also get, whether it’s the fact that you want to regain time, you want to regain freedom, you want to increase revenue?

And so that also has to be factored into when you are making a hiring decision. As the CEO, if it’s only you, what is the goal of that hire? Again, do you want to just regain more freedom so that you can start advancing the business or you can increase maybe partnerships? Is that what you’re looking for? Or are you looking for someone to come in to help to increase revenue? And different stages of business call for different hires.

That is definitely a loaded question, but when it comes down to the full picture of the hiring process, the pain point is one of the starting points, but also looking at what is going to increase your revenue and the other factors for that position as well. So hope that makes sense.

Kira:  Yeah. And how do you know when it’s too soon to bring on a team member or when it is the right time to hire some help?

Ahfeeyah:  I’m a little biased on this particular question. I think that for me, I say hire as fast as you can. A lot of times, the CEOs, what we’re thinking about is can I afford it? And we don’t stop to even really look into different options for hiring. So hire and get the support that you need sooner, rather than later. I don’t know that there’s ever a time when it’s too soon. Because you can start out even to your earlier days. You can start out with a simple VA, you can start out with a social media manager that can help you to free up your time.

The last thing that you want to do, especially being a scalable CEO, which is what I teach. The last thing that you want to be doing is meaningless tasks in your business. That is the first and the quickest way to burn out. So even if your first hire is a simple VA to help you to manage your calendar, manage your emails, my advice would be to hire out for that so that you are always operating at your highest level, that you are always able to be in this position to grow your company.

Kira:  Just wondering what other mistakes you see creatives, I know you work with creatives and not just copywriters, but what mistakes do creatives typically make when they are trying to scale in your programs and in your coaching?

Ahfeeyah:  Failing to hire fast enough. And this is not to be mistaken and say, “Hey, go out, get a team that you’re not able to fund.” That’s not the case, but you want to focus on specifically what is the growth plan? And if you’re going to grow, it’s going to be very, very hard for you to ultimately grow by yourself. There’s a saying and I hope I don’t misquote it, but the saying is, “Ultimately, if you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, then go with a team, go with other people.”

And so that is the biggest mistake, it’s like, “Hey, I am going to do all of the things by myself. I am going to work 14 and 16-hour days in order to push my vision forward.” And then oftentimes that leads to burnout. That leads to then having a waitlist of people booked out into the next year, and so they’re not able to serve their clients, are not able to grow, and they’re not able to scale because things are not properly put into place. That is one of the biggest mistakes that I’ve seen.

Kira:  I know that you scaled your first company, I believe it was before you turned 26. I’m not sure of the exact age, but can you talk a little bit about what type of business that was and how you scaled it beyond building a team? What else helped you scale that business?

Ahfeeyah:  Absolutely. The biggest part was definitely having a team, and I like to joke about the fact that I was building a team, it didn’t even really know that I was building a team. That company was actually a coaching firm and we specialized in life, career and business coaching. That it was The Ultimate Trifecta, which is the name of the business. And so what I had done was that I said, “You know what, what exactly makes a well-rounded person or what exactly is the need?”

And that was again, having life coaching, having career coaching, and also having a business coaching. And so it started with me hiring other coaches, hiring other coaches who could operate and serve in the areas that were not my area of expertise. And then we were able to bring on a marketing and a sales team to make sure that they were constantly leads coming in, and that those leads were then being converted into clients and customers.

And then one of the genius things that I later realized was partnerships and networking. A lot of my success over the years has been around building relationships. I remember going to a career fair and I think it was very expensive actually to have a table there. And I remember partnering, and that was, I guess, our marketing strategy at the time. And so what we would do is we would offer free resume writing to all of the attendees of the career fairs. And so when we did that, I remember one career we are walking away with over 1,500 resumes.

On those resumes though is their emails, their contact information. Obviously we didn’t do 1,500 resume reviews, but for the people who weren’t able to get a live resume review, it was at that moment, that was our, I guess the beginning of email marketing at the time. We were gathering their contact information and then he would reach out to them at a later time. And so that was a freeway of grabbing their emails, gathering their contact information. And many of those people then turned into not resume writing clients, but full career coaching clients that we ended up working with long term.

And the career development wings that I led of that company was actually what grows our highest revenue in the company.

Kira:  Okay. And as you’ve built your scalable CEO model, what else is really key in that model that we should focus on? We’ve covered a little bit about team growth, but what else is critical in that scalable CEO model?

Ahfeeyah:  I have my SOS model that I like to talk about, that systems, operations and support that covers the team side of it. It covers having those systems in place, covers operations. And I would like to touch on the operation side of it a little bit, because what we have to realize is that through our operations is where we’re able to elevate our client experience. And once our clients are having an amazing experience with us, it’s in those moments that we are then able to create ambassadors for our brand, ambassadors for the work that we do. And so that’s where we want to focus.

And then the second thing that I would say for those of us that are wanting to scale, it’s really, really important to develop yourself as a leader. Oftentimes creators, again, we’re running our business, but as leaders, then it’s at that moment that we step into CEOship and we’re looking at our, what I call our CEO dashboard, where we’re looking at the business from a bird’s eye view. So I talk about, what is your leadership love language? And it leads all back to the same thing with having your team.

But when you’re able to understand your vision as a CEO, when you’re able to understand your communication style as a CEO, a lot of things run a lot smoother. So in becoming a scalable CEO, dig deep and figure out what your CEO vision is, make sure that how you’re delivering to your clients, your client experience is second to none. And there are a lot of things that will begin to grow and scale in the business by taking a look at these things a little bit more closer.

Kira:  Hey, let’s jump back in and talk about a few things that stood out. Rob, kick it off.

Rob:  Yeah. There were a few things that jumped out to me almost immediately. At the beginning, when Ahfeeyah is talking about her experience with writing resumes, at first I was thinking, “Well, I’m not sure how much this applies to copywriters.” But then as she started talking like, “Oh, this absolutely applies because with the resumes,” and she mentioned this, “you’re trying to capture that attention in the first couple of seconds that somebody got that in front of you.” And it’s the exact same thing that we do with copywriting.

We need to capture attention first. And Ahfeeyah talks about, with a resume example, looking for the job description, identifying what it is that they’re trying to find, what is that need to that problem? And obviously that’s what we’re doing with copy when we write it. We’re trying to identify what is the problem that our client has or that our client’s customer has, and immediately showing them how to solve it. So grabbing that attention and solving that problem right off

As I talk about this, this is something that most copywriters are pretty good at doing for our clients. We’re not always good at identifying that for ourselves. So when we’re talking about helping our clients solve their number one problem, oftentimes we reach out, “Hey, I’m a copywriter, I can help you with content. I can help you with copy. I can write a sales page,” and we’re not going that deeper level and figuring out what is the problem that we need to help our clients solve.

I know this is something that we talk a lot about on the podcast in different ways, but it just jumped out to me again as she was talking about what Ahfeeyah does with resumes. So what she did when she was doing that, and it’s something that copywriters need to be doing and getting better at with our clients as well.

Kira:  It’s really talking about your X-factor positioning statement. And that’s what we’ve talked about because that’s what we do and help copywriters figure out in The Copywriter Accelerator program. And so I know Rob, you mentioned that earlier, but if that’s something that you struggle with, then jump onto that accelerator waitlist at thecopywriteraccelerator.com, because we do go in depth if you’re struggling to figure out what that is.

Ahfeeyah talked a lot about sales, marketing, and operations, but oftentimes it feels like all three areas of your business need attention at once. Rob, how would you approach all three? If you’re building your business and struggling, which one comes first? How do you approach it?

Rob:  As I think about this, it’s always, what is the most important thing happening in your business? And so marketing obviously is critical, sales are critical. Writing the copy, the operations, delivering for your client, that’s critical. Making sure that you’re protected, that’s critical legally. And make sure your finances are in shape, you’ve got enough set away for taxes and all of that, it’s critical. It’s like everything is important, so how do you determine what’s first most important?

And to me, it’s really, what is that most important need? Do you have enough to pay the bills this month? If not, then you need to be selling your services, you need to be finding clients. If you’re fully booked and you’re still not bringing in enough money, then you need to be raising your prices and doing a better job of selling something that solves a bigger problem. But if you’ve got that money coming in and the next thing is, “Okay, where does the money come from next month?” And that’s more of a marketing function.

How do you attract people so that they’re starting to come to you, asking you about your services and getting in line so that you can write for them? If you’ve got that taken care of, the last thing is your operations, how do you make that experience just absolutely stellar for your clients so that they want to come back again, again? So they want to refer you to others, so they talk about you, post on social media about the experience, all those kinds of things.

That’s how I look at what’s most important when it comes to figuring out of all of the critical pieces, what do you do next?

Kira:  And one thing I know for sure, because we talk to a lot of copywriters, and the think tank, and The Accelerator and the underground, and one thing that is common that most of them share is that they are not marketing enough or at all. And so that’s where a lot of the struggle comes from. And when the business isn’t bringing in enough net revenue and we ask, “Well, what does your marketing look like today?” And there’s nothing. Or it’s just, it’s very little and it’s inconsistent.

And I’m saying this as someone who has also struggled with this, especially for copywriters, that marketing piece is so important. And we know how to do it because we’re doing it for our clients. That’s why we’re distracted and not doing it for our own businesses. And so that is the piece that if we focus on it, it will make a huge difference in our own business. But we’re focused on client work and not doing it.

Rob:  One of the things or the lenses that Ahfeeyah used as she talks about this stuff is having that organizational chart. Again, this is really corporatey and a lot of us, as you pointed out as you were talking with Ahfeeyah, we see ourselves as solopreneurs, single operators. We don’t have a big team, and so we don’t need an organizational chart. And I think maybe a different way of looking at that is to think about a responsibilities chart.

Of all of the things that need to get done in your business, need to do research, I need to write copy, I need to have somebody pay off the bills on the credit card or do the bookkeeping, or figure out my legal agreement. You can put those things into an organizational chart so that you’re looking at a responsibilities chart instead of an org chart. And then figuring out, okay, which of the things do you do and which of the things can you move to members of a team like a VA, or a bookkeeper, or whoever the right person is for that stuff.

So, if that language around org chart and organizing marketing, sales, operations, legal, finance, and all of those things is getting you a little bit hung up on it, think about these are the jobs to be done and who’s going to do it.

Kira:  I feel like maybe I’m remembering this incorrectly, but you didn’t like it when we started working on our org chart and calling it an org chart.

Rob:  Yeah, I hated it. I hate it. I don’t like thinking of our business as a corporate… I don’t like meetings, I don’t like any of that stuff. My experience in corporate world sort of ruined me for that. And so this is a better lens for me, for sure, because stuff has to be done, but I’m not sure that I necessarily want to have, “Oh, we need a sales department and we’re five people doing this thing,” or whatever. That stuff bugs me.

Kira:  Yeah. This is how I know how to bug Rob if I ever want to bug him, I start talking about our company in terms of departments-

Rob:  Yeah, there you go.

Kira:  … and like, “Hey, what’s happening in the marketing department today, Rob?” Yeah, it gets to you, I know. But yeah, I think it could be helpful language or responsibilities, whatever works best for you. As long as you’re looking at the big picture and trying to decrease stress for you so that you don’t have to do everything in your business at all times. Unless that’s how you operate in that makes you happy, then you can do it. Go for it.

Rob:  Exactly. It really comes down to, look, we know that most of us who are listening to this podcast are working as copywriters. We’re pretty good at writing. We’ve been good at writing for a long time, that’s one of the reasons why we choose to be copywriters. But if you want to be a successful business owner, you’ve got to do more than be good at writing. You’ve got to be good at owning a business. And there’s a whole lot of other skills that go into that. And so again, thinking through those corporate type things as a business owner is an important step. Even if you, like me reject all of those corporate labels, that stuff still has to be done and still has to be thought about.

Kira:  Ahfeeyah also talked about the CEO dashboard, and I just liked the idea of thinking about a CEO dashboard. I know we’re building one for The Copywriter Club. I think it’s something that applies to every copywriter’s business, and really to me, it just means looking at certain metrics that matter the most in your own business and forgetting about everything else that you can get lost in. And so I’m just wondering, Rob, what to you, as a copywriter is most important and it should be in that CEO dashboard?

Rob:  If I’m thinking about my business as a solo copywriter and what I want to see is revenue for the month and maybe things that are booked out so that I have an idea of how much money is coming in. I want to also see the number of projects that I’m working on, because obviously if the number of projects is big and the revenue’s big, as opposed to small number of projects, revenue big, you’re obviously doing something different with your rates and how you’re earning. So that’s an important function.

But I also want to be looking at the leads that are coming my way in the future, because that is an indicator of the health of my business in the future. If I’m doing advertising, I want to think about the cost of the ads, as well as the return on the investment. Let’s say I run $100 of ads and I get $500 from business, I want to be looking at those kinds of numbers as well. But if I’m not running ads, I’m mostly going to be looking at those other things, the projects I’m working on, the stuff that I’ve got coming in the door.

And then having a dashboard is good, but you need to use that information then to act on it and make changes in your business. So if I were to look at that and say, “Oh, I don’t have enough leads, that tells me that I either need to start pitching or I need to start reaching out to past clients, or I need to be putting myself out there on social media, talking about what I do, whatever the thing is, that’s going to generate leads for me. So the dashboard is only a tool for figuring out what is the thing that we’ve got to do to move the business forward.

Kira:  And what I would add to that too, and this pertains to a business like The Copywriter Club, when you have a podcast and you have a media component, which many copywriters do. But I’m going to focus on list growth and capture that. Also podcast growth, especially for us, we know that our podcast listeners often end up working with us, so it’s important to our growth. Like you mentioned, leads, how many sales calls you actually book and how many sales calls you close. Those are all key.

And I didn’t capture that information frequently enough, especially when I was just starting, as far as measuring and determining how many sales calls I was closing. I never captured that information to look at it and figure out, well, if I’m only booking four projects and I didn’t nail the four sales calls I have this month, something’s wrong, I should focus on a sales call training. Or if I don’t have any leads, then I should focus on marketing like you mentioned.

You’re right, it’s a tool and it’s worth capturing and figuring out what metrics are worth paying attention to in your business, so you can reflect once a month or once a week, or once a quarter and figure out where you can focus in your business for growth.

Rob:  Yeah, exactly. One other thing that I want to point out, I know we’re getting a little bit long here, but Ahfeeyah was talking about how she went to that event and offered to do a bunch of free resumes. As I was listening to her that I was thinking, “This is actually a really good idea if you are working in a niche.” Go to a conference for your niche. So you’re the only copywriter that’s there and make some kind of an offer. You don’t necessarily need to write copy for free, but maybe you have something where you can give a way, a free audit of your website.

Maybe you do want to do one free rewrite to a winner of however many people drop the card in, whatever. If you can afford a table, get a table. There are other ways obviously to get your offer out when you’re at a conference. But then collecting all of those emails and starting to create a relationship with all of these potential clients. You do that once or twice and you could easily fill up your schedule with work for a couple of years. And the fact that she did it in the resume space or whatever, great idea, it’s how she started out her business.

But it seemed to me that that’s a real stealable idea for a copywriter who wants to operate in a particular niche. Go to an event, make an offer, make connections, and then milk those connections for future work.

Kira:  Yes, it’s doing the unscalable work-

Rob:  Exactly.

Kira:  … And making it scalable to like Ahfeeyah did.

Rob:  Let’s go back to the episode and talk more about how we can become better leaders in our businesses.

Kira:  Yeah. Let’s dig deeper into the leadership piece first. I’m a copywriter, I want to become a better leader, what are some things I can do to really step into that that will have the biggest impact on my business and my revenue? What does that look like?

Ahfeeyah:  I’m telling you what I have done, because I know that definitely people have different things that work for them. But in developing myself as a leader and helping my clients develop their leadership skills, I have, I required of them and asked of them to figure out simple things like “what is your human design?” Those are great tools and resources to understand how they best work. And then we talked about communication style, really understanding how they communicate and what works best for them.

For me, I invested in a coach. I invested in having a coach, I invested in having the right environment and the right community around me that would allow me and foster an environment where I felt comfortable enough to grow. Where I felt comfortable to discover myself and discover what really worked for me. I read lots and lots of books, so there is… One of my favorite books is the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, and I hope that I said that right.

And so, I dug deep into what does it mean to be a leader? What are these laws of leadership? Am I leading with empathy? Am I empowering my team to be amazing leaders like myself or am I becoming a bottleneck in my company and not allowing anyone to really thrive and grow? So I really, really took a deep dive into that. And then the last thing, I did complete a certification through Harvard for leadership development, and a lot of the things that I learned in books and a lot of the things that I learned with my coach, it was confirmed, it was validated once more through that program. So again, communication, how you communicate is key and knowing your leadership love language is very, very important.

Kira:  Are there any specific examples you can share with us, especially from the leadership development at Harvard? Any specific takeaways that we could implement in our business today, if we wanted to practice it today and with our team we could jump in?

Ahfeeyah:  Yeah. I would say that team communication is one of the biggest takeaways, and then from my program alike, and this was lightly covered, but it was definitely a part of that, is making sure that you’re not becoming the bottleneck in your company. You want to elevate team members and you want to make sure that they feel, that they can operate in their zone of genius. Oftentimes when we are micromanaging in our business, it is a sign that there’s a lack of trust. And a lack of trust in our work environment is not healthy at all. And so that was one of the things that stuck with me.

The second thing was really understanding the middle point between being passive and being aggressive, and that is being an assertive leader. A lot of times I was like, “Hey, I don’t want to seem upset. I don’t want to come off as aggressive, but I also don’t want to be a passive leader and allow things to go on in my business that I didn’t necessarily want or didn’t necessarily agree with.” Learning about CEO vision, very, very important. What is your personal vision? Those are some of the takeaways that I can remember and that are again, embedded in my program because it is so very key to remember those things.

Kira:  And could you give an example of passive leadership versus assertive leadership, especially in your own business, maybe something that you’ve done or shifted because it wasn’t working?

Ahfeeyah:  I’ll lean into more of my work as a creative director for this example. I am very particular for example, about design and it has a lot to do with what our clients expect of our company, what they expect of our brand. Our clients are coming to us oftentimes because they are looking for a premium luxury and modern experience. And so I’ve had members on my team that would take some time for them to naturally learn our aesthetic and learn the way that we do things.

And in the past, before I was able to develop myself as a leader and step to my CEOship many years ago, I probably would have seen something that I don’t like or didn’t fit the aesthetic or didn’t fit our level of excellence, and I would say, “You know what, I’m just going to go ahead and do it myself.” And not say anything about it or not give an opportunity for that team member to learn, and that’s just being passive.

Another example of that is maybe that you are working with a colleague or this can be in any environment, and you’re working with someone and they might do something that you don’t necessarily like. And instead of saying something about it or instead of addressing the situation, you shy away from the conflict, you shy away from hard conversations. Maybe it’s an employee that is no longer working out and you make the decision to continue working with that employee, although you know that it’s not working out.

So right there, we’ve given pretty much three examples of what it could mean to be passive, whether it’s in a working relationship or if it’s with someone who’s supporting you. But none the less, those are the examples of being passive. Now, on the other side of it, being way too aggressive can be making very harsh decisions without being properly informed, making abrupt decisions. Maybe an employee does something and as opposed to having a conversation with them and figuring out their train of thought or figuring out what informed some of their decision-making is saying, “Hey, I’m just going to cut this person off.”

So now you are team members and you’re like 20, 30 team members in, and you haven’t been able to work it out because you’ve been probably more aggressive in nature towards situations. Or maybe it’s the fact that you’re taking things personal as a leader. Maybe a team member did something and you’re figuring, you know what, this person just doesn’t care about the company. I’m just going to fire them, I’m just going to do it myself, whatever that particular action is. And you are approaching situations in an aggressive manner, not leading with empathy, not thinking about the other person.

And so being assertive really is the balance in between the two. So when I’m teaching my clients to onboard a new team member, we talk about this. When we’re talking about the new team member’s first 90 days, we’re talking about this and it’s really interwoven into the conversation. Being assertive means, are there times in place, is there a time for you and your team member to check in? Is there opportunities not for you to just talk at your team member, but really give them the opportunity to speak back to you and provide feedback on what exactly it is that is working well for them or may not be working for them at all?

Those are some of the things where we can find balance and we can be assertive, we can share. If someone did something that we did not like, we can say, “Hey, listen, I really didn’t like that and here are some things that might work a little bit better.” Understanding our human design, understanding our communication style helps us to have intentional conversations that are not aggressive and are not passive, but we’re comfortable and our team members are comfortable as well.

I know that was a bit long-winded, but those are some examples of all different three and how we should be able to move forward, being assertive leaders and not necessarily passive or aggressive.

Kira:  I really liked that, and it seems like that requires a decent mindset shift. Even if I know it logically that I should do this and that will be helpful to be more assertive as a leader, it’s a huge shift to actually act that way and act it out, and to create that new behavior too. Is there anything that’s helped you… Beyond the trainings that you’ve experienced and the books that you’ve read, are there any practices that have helped you make that mindset shift so that you can really own that new behavior?

Ahfeeyah:  Yeah. You hit it on the head when you talked about mindset. I do a lot of work around mindset and really figuring out, well, what is actually happening in this situation? What do I know to be true? Brendon Bouchard has an amazing High Performance Planner that I am in love with. And so I opened that daily, I journal. I make sure that before I start my day as a CEO, that I’m really, really diving into hearing my voice. I’m a heavy spiritual person, so I make sure that I pray and I meditate in the morning, and just really check in with myself.

A conference that I attended, I remember the woman saying that oftentimes when we delay responding to things, going back to being passive, when we delay responding to things that we are not in tune with ourselves. And how can we lead other people and empower them to operate as their best selves if we’re not operating as our best selves? So I think that that’s very, very key. And so that mindset shift has been really a combination of journaling, affirmations and learning who I am as a leader, learning who I am as a CEO, and really just leaning into that.

Kira:  I could see where maybe a copywriter listening might think, “Well, I don’t really have to develop this